News
Enlarged Board of Appeal Decision G03/08
On 12th May 2010, the Enlarged Board of Appeal issued their much-anticipated opinion relating to the patentability of programs for computers. Unfortunately, the opinion did not quite live up to the hype.
By way of background, in 2008 Alison Brimelow, the then President of the European Patent Office, asked the Enlarged Board of Appeal to consider a number of questions concerning the patentability of programs for computers (computer-implemented inventions). In the President’s opinion, there were a number of conflicting decisions of the Boards of Appeal relating to patentability of computer-implemented inventions that required clarification by the Enlarged Board of Appeal.
The Enlarged Board of Appeal found that the Referral by the President was inadmissible and that the diverging decisions of the Boards of Appeal merely represented a development of the law rather than a contradiction of previous assessments of the law. This is disappointing as many believe that the Enlarged Board of Appeal missed an opportunity to provide clarification on the law in this area. However, on a positive note, the Enlarged Board of Appeal did provide some guidance on the patentability of programs for computers by discussing in great detail the past and current practice of the EPO in this field.